EXAMS ARE IMPORTANT…BUT SO IS WHAT COMES AFTER EXAMS!
Students around Australia are now wrapping up their end of year exams and feeling ready to take a well-earned break. However, it’s important that they don’t neglect a critical learning opportunity that comes with finishing their exams: learning through self-reflection.
At Organising Students, we make sure to catch up with each of our students after the end of their exam period because we want them to make the most of this opportunity for self-reflection. Often students are very happy to have their exams behind them and the idea of reflecting on them may not come naturally. After all, the next round of exams feels a long way off! And if they have just finished year 12 and are moving on from their school years, why bother revisiting them?
But of course, future opportunities to use or improve on their exam preparation skills will come around faster than they think — whether that’s next year’s exam period, a higher education pathway, or any future occasion when they have a project with a deadline that takes an extended period of dedication and focus.
If you want to help your student embark on some self-reflection, here are a few tips to get the conversation going:
- Start off by celebrating
This might mean congratulating them on the exams they were happy with, or it might be as simple as celebrating that they made it to the end.Most students will have had a moment (or many moments!) when it felt like they were never going to get through exams. It can be helpful to put that experience into perspective by reminding them that even though they felt that way, they still got through. - Put the focus on “next time”
The key thing you want to communicate here is that each exam experience is a learning opportunity to build on.Remind them about future opportunities to use or improve on what they have learned from this exam period. These might be future academic tasks, but they might also be other ordinary life tasks that require the good habits of organisation, independence and perseverance.If they have made progress in these habits this year, that is progress they will get to benefit from again and again! And if they are able to recognise areas for improvement, that in itself is a learning opportunity which can help them into the future.
- Invite them to learn from both the disappointments and the successes
If students are able to identify some of the reasons things didn’t go as well as they had wanted, that is the first step to improving next time.The next step is to decide what concrete changes they can make to improve their approach or get the help they need.However, it is important not to focus only on the disappointments! If the student has implemented some successful strategies this year, make sure to emphasise that. This is a great motivator for continuing to use those strategies “next time”.
If you would like us to assist your child in preparing for “next time”, please get in touch.
